Stephen Hawking's final research paper, just published in an open access journal, suggests that our Universe may be one of many similar to our own. It points a way forward for astronomers to find evidence of the existence of parallel universes. The paper

awesome, i was just reading about this on phys.org and was just about to post it.

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-multiversestephen-hawking-theory-big.html

FYI from what I understand all physics journals or papers are free. The only science that is practiced in a truly open source way.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FJHEP04%282018%29147

Abstract:

The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. We derive a dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed Euclidean CFT located at the threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude of different geometries of the threshold surface in the no-boundary state. Its local and global behavior in dual toy models shows that the amplitude is low for surfaces which are not nearly conformal to the round three-sphere and essentially zero for surfaces with negative curvature. Based on this we conjecture that the exit from eternal inflation does not produce an infinite fractal-like multiverse, but is finite and reasonably smooth.

Ok . . .

so that went over my head . . .